


breathing, breathless, on til the end

by ivelostmyspectacles



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Pining, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 02:14:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19075411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivelostmyspectacles/pseuds/ivelostmyspectacles
Summary: He coughs until his throat burns, which probably isn't a good sign.When he pulls the tissue away, there's a singular flower petal sat amidst the phlegm.





	breathing, breathless, on til the end

**Author's Note:**

> Martin's thoughts get pretty bleak; be forewarned!
> 
> inspired by @morebunlessmon thanks✌️

There's a tickle in his throat that he can't quite displace.

The tea doesn't help, even, even when he puts honey in it and takes his time to savor it instead of gulping it like he's used to. There's no time for tea anymore. There's no comfort to it.

But the tickle doesn't go away. It isn't his allergies; it's habitual to take the pills on time during allergy season and he hasn't missed a dose, and he hasn't _had_ allergy problems since his doctors had recommended the other meds.

He really, really hopes he isn't getting a cold. He can really do without it right now. There's so much uncertainty in his job right now. The only thing he's sure of is that his cheque has gotten bigger since he'd started working for Peter, which doesn't really _help_ anything. Although he guesses if he is getting sick, that can pay for it… but he hopes he's not getting sick.

The tickle remains.

When everyone else has gone home, when it's just more or less him still at the helm, he ducks off to the toilets to try and hack up whatever is giving him that tickly feeling he can't push away. Not that anyone's probably going to care if he's gross coughing into a wad of toilet paper, but, well, he's trying _not_ to attract attention these days.

He coughs until his throat burns, which probably isn't a good sign.

When he pulls the tissue away, there's a singular flower petal sat amidst the phlegm.

For awhile, he just stares. Because what else are you supposed to do? He's been through a lot, but he doesn't have an entry in his Survival Handbook for _coughing up flowers._ And it's just a little flower. Just a little flower petal. A little purple thing.

… still, it's a _flower._

Now, he can't withhold the noise of disgust. Or maybe it’s something akin to panic because that's not right and not normal and _not okay._ So he tosses the paper into the toilet and flushes it down before he can dwell on it any longer, because he thinks he might vomit if he does, but, but– at least it's just a flower petal, right? At least it's not _spiders_ or something.

That idea, as much as he still likes the little critters, really does threaten bile. There's a line. He's drawn it. He needs more tea. Really, _really_ scalding tea.

He coughs again as he leaves the bathroom.

 

He coughs up a mouthful of them, three weeks later. Martin feels a little dizzy with the panic of it. Actually, he hasn’t really felt great in the past three weeks, anyway, but, okay, a little flower petal here and there, he can ignore that. Mostly. It sounds terrible, but… there’s bigger things to worry about. He doesn’t look in his tissues when he coughs into them, and brushes away a stray petal from his pillow when he wakes up, bleary and tired, in the morning.

He doesn’t go to the doctor. It isn’t a doctor thing. It’s a… Magnus Archives thing. It’s a supernatural thing.

But he can’t ignore a mouthful of them. Small, slightly curved petals. He thinks they look familiar, maybe, but being able to identify flowers isn’t his thing. He’s just glad they’re small, even if the… even if the whole thing makes him want to choke on principle.

Actually, he’d _really_ been hoping it had been something Peter was doing to him. That was terrible, wasn’t it? _Oh, right, by the way, I hope this odd flower stuff is something my manipulative, non-human boss has cursed me with!_ But he coughs up the mouthful of purple petals when he’s working in Peter’s office, and Peter just stares at him like he’s the most disgusting thing on earth.

 

Hanahaki disease. He gives in and looks it up when they keep coming, and there’s a name for it. Hanahaki disease. And he hadn’t been too far from the mark, after all. It _was_ a curse. A curse of unrequited love.

Martin has an anxiety attack, after that. He think he deserves it.

He doesn’t let himself linger, though. Not on the anxiety attack, anyway. He can feel the flowers in his lungs these days, and it’s getting harder to breathe _without_ hyperventilating. So, he does what he’s used to: he researches.

The way he sees it, there are three options.

The first is foolproof. Easy. Jon has to return his feelings. But God knows Martin has _tried_ to make Jon love him, has thrown every _ounce_ of himself into grasping at any scrap of affection that Jon might give him in hopes of reciprocation. But it’s never worked. It’s never been that way for Jon. It never will be. Next.

Secondly– apparently– there’s _surgery?_ A way to remove the flowers from his lungs. And Martin is surrounded by that increased number of otherworldly crap these days, he knows _someone_ could probably do it. Peter, even. But there’s a little caveat: removing the flowers means removing his emotional capacity to _love._ Which. That wouldn’t be so bad. What has _love_ ever done for him? Gave him a death sentence, apparently, in one way or the other. Besides, it wasn’t like anyone would ever love him, anyway.

But more than that… the surgery runs the risk of making him forget the person he’s in love with in the first place. Making him forget _Jon._ That scares him more than losing his emotions. It’s selfish, but he doesn’t think he can just let himself forget Jon. He doesn’t want to. That hurts worse than choking on flower petals.

The third and final way is, of course, death. The disease will kill him. Suffocate him. He won’t be able to breathe, and then he’ll just… die.

… maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, either.

His options aren’t really options. Martin rubs his chest and thinks so vehemently, for a moment, how he wishes he hadn’t fallen in love with Jonathan Sims. But then he takes it back. Immediately. Because of course he takes it back. Jon is… Jon is worth more to him than his own entire life.

Martin can’t _not_ be in love with him. It’s really as simple as that.

 

The nausea hits him like a truck. He very narrowly makes it into the visitor bathrooms to throw up a cascade of purple and whatever he’s managed to eat today. Not much. Tea and toast. The petals tumble from his mouth. They’ve taken more of a solid form these days. One knitted to the other to another, flower blossoms bigger than his own fingers now.

They’re hyacinth. He’d looked them up when he’d found out what all this had meant. They’re pretty, really, when they’re not choking you to death. And Martin likes purple. He thinks. Maybe he hates it, now. He’s… just not sure of much of anything, anymore.

One constant remains.

When he exits the bathroom stall, Jon is hovering, awkward, by the sinks, and Martin takes a step back so quickly his back slams into the door behind him. It doesn’t hurt, he doesn’t think. He puts a hand over his mouth– he thinks he might puke from the sudden swell of nerves, now– and wheezes out Jon’s name past the agony in his chest.

It’s been so long since they’ve properly talked. You’d think that would have helped his cause. It hasn’t.

“Saw you run off.” Jon sounds as uncomfortable as Martin feels, these days. And he looks… bad. As bad as Martin feels, but at least Martin knows _Jon’s_ being protected, has been protected, no matter how much sleep the man _must_ be missing to look that way. “I just… wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Oh.” He lowers his hand. Maybe he is done puking for now. Or maybe Jon’s concern is easing the pain. But it’s not love. Martin doesn’t try to pretend. He doesn’t hold it against him– how _could_ he?– but he doesn’t pretend. He doesn’t have time to anymore.

“Which clearly you’re not.” Jon turns to the tap, runs his mug under the stream to fill with water. Martin’s oddly flattered when Jon offers it to him, even though that _had_ been the clear purpose and only natural response, considering Jon’s been there, listening to him vomit. If only he knew.

(There’s a fourth option: Martin could tell him. He could tell him he loves him, he could tell him about the hanahaki, he could tell him about the _cure._ But that’s not fair. Jon doesn’t need to suffer, too. You couldn’t force love. Well, you _could,_ but…

Martin isn’t aiming for guilt, and he definitely, _definitely_ isn’t looking for pity.

Pity wouldn’t cure him, anyway.)

“Thanks,” he murmurs, and takes a drink of the water. Everything tastes tainted these days. A bit like rose water, which he’s never liked the taste of to begin with, but it’s less… _sweet?_ A little bitter. Fragrant, but not good. _Poison._

“I…” Jon starts, and then stops. And then starts again, “I don’t think I’m your boss anymore.” Martin almost jolts at hearing the words come out of his mouth, even though he’d long since stopped calling himself _archival assistant._ “But I’m asking– telling– you, as a friend, Martin… you should go home. Take it easy for awhile. Don’t let _Peter Lukas_ keep you here when you’re sick.”

_Peter isn’t the one who’s keeping me here,_ Martin thinks, and he doesn’t say. He just nods, and drinks some more of the water he knows won’t help.

Jon brushes away a petal from Martin’s sweater, and Martin pretends he doesn’t know where it’s come from. He pretends he doesn’t want to lean into the press of Jon’s hand at his chest, too. He pretends he doesn’t cry a little in the bathroom after Jon leaves.

He’s still carrying Jon’s mug with trembling hands when he goes back to work. Peter eyes it with a look that’s grown ever more disdainful these past few weeks.

Martin, feeling more bitter than he has in _years,_ squints through watery eyes and snaps, “oh, does it even _matter_ anymore?”

Peter shakes his head. “Not at all,” he says, and Martin grips tighter at the mug.

 

He stops going into work, after that. He gets as far as his car, the next day, but he’s so tired and miserable and coughing non-stop, and this time brings blood he knows he won’t be able to hide if he goes in. So, he doesn’t. Peter already knows what’s happening, and he hardly sees the others, anyway. They won’t notice he’s gone.

Well. They won’t notice until too late, anyway.

He spends a few days with his recorder in hand, turning it over and over like the words he wants to say. He goes through a few tapes, even. But he burns them. Nothing is adequate, and everything is _too much._ This isn’t poetry. It’s his last will and testament.

… he really, _really_ wishes he wasn’t dying along.

He definitely doesn’t say that on the tapes.

Anyway, that’s what he gets for dealing with _The Lonely._

(Option five: become a full-on avatar. People don’t seem to die when they do that. Jon hadn’t died at The Unknowing. Or, he _had,_ but he was still here. And still himself. Still mostly himself. But then there were people like Jane Prentiss or Jude Perry, who were… human but definitely _not_ human, less human than Jon was, and Martin didn’t want to be… that like. The taking away his humanity conundrum again.

It’s selfish, especially comparing his problems to _Jon’s…_  but that’s pretty on par, these days, he guesses.

Besides, he’s got this terrible mental picture that if he became an avatar _now,_ he’d bring the flowers with him, and turn into some twisted version of himself that, even if he wasn’t suffering any longer, still wouldn’t be himself. And he’d hurt people just by _being_ like that. He’d hurt Jon by being like that.)

It’s his fault. Martin turns the words over in his mind, and the flowers on his tongue, and forces himself to keep breathing until he can say something he needs to. Wants to. _Needs_ to.

 

When he’s burned through his tapes and the flowers have burned through him, he picks up a pencil instead.

He doesn’t write an apology. He knows what his flowers mean. He’d looked that bit up as well.

Instead, he settles on the first– and last– thing that comes into his head, and doesn’t have time to change it when he starts wheezing again.

 

_Meet you where the eyes can’t see._

_All my love,_ _  
_ _Martin_

**Author's Note:**

> Purple hyacinth meaning: 
> 
> Sorrow. I'm sorry. Please forgive me.
> 
>  
> 
> I mean if you wanna imagine Jon showed up in time to do something, be my guest! if you wanna imagine he showed up to a lake of bloody hyacinth surrounding him instead, _be my guest!!!!!!!!!! orz_


End file.
